Decentralized AI startup Nous Research raised $50 million in the Series A round led by Crypto Venture Giant Paradigm, marking one of the biggest investments to date at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence.
According to an April 25 report from Fortune, the funding round is worth it with a $1 billion token valuation. Previous investors include distributed global, North Island Ventures and Delphi Digital.
Operating since 2022, Nous Research is in the spotlight with the latest funding to develop open source AI models with distributed infrastructure.
The company aims to leverage the Solana blockchain to coordinate and encourage global participation in AI models training, and challenge intensive giants such as Openai and Deepseek.
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Nous utilizes global idle computing power for AI training
Founded by AI researchers, including collaborators such as Diederik Kingma (co-inventor of Adam Optimizer), Nous takes a different approach to typical cryptographic AI projects.
Instead of relying on centralized data centers, individuals around the world can contribute idle computing power to AI training.
Blockchain technology supports this model to mitigate risks like data addiction through functions such as Byzantine fault tolerance, while ensuring safe and incentive participation.
“We’ve had so many things from the mentality who wants to create and serve the best AI in the world,” co-founder Karan Malhotra told Fortune.
According to the report, Nous Research’s 20-person team will allocate much of the new capital to expand computational resources and research forays.
In December 2024, Nous told Venture Beat that he was doing it before training by decentralizing 15 billion parameters of LLM and being responsible for progress to showcase transparency and performance.
Paradigm backing, on the other hand, shows a greater interest in AI within crypto venture circles.
“This open, community-oriented approach is a strong contrast to the closed focused efforts from the incumbent lab,” paradigm partner Arjun Balaji reportedly told the outlet.
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The paradigm is the highest performance crypto VC
Paradigm is one of the largest and most successful crypto venture capital companies.
In March, web3 data platform Kaito AI ranked the paradigm as the top-performing crypto VC over the past year, posting impressive 11.80% performance metrics, surpassing other major players such as Alliance (10.64%), Dragonfly (8.32%), A16Z (6.94%) and Multicoin Capital (5.86%).
Founded by Coinbase’s Fred Ehrsam and former Sequiaia partner Matt Huang, the paradigm has built a strong reputation for discovering high potential crypto projects early.
Its portfolio includes consistent support for major Defi platforms such as UNISWAP (UNI) and DYDX, as well as Ethereum scaling solutions such as Optimism.
Paradigm also led the $255 million round of StarkNet, a key player in zero-knowledge rollup technology.
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